Modern computing systems support a large number of applications serving a large number of diverse users. Even though hardware processing and memory has continued to increase in performance, software continues to outpace these advances in the number of new features that are developed to support new and existing applications. Using the cell phone as an example, many features are available for setting desired operations of the device including the type and loudness of a ring, phone directories, menu commands, inbox settings, display settings, security settings, and so forth. In addition to phone capabilities, other hardware features and associated software are beginning to appear on cell phones such as digital cameras and web services. In more complicated systems such as operating systems, software development systems, or advanced communications architectures, the number of features for any given application can be extensive.
To develop and design sophisticated software technologies, development tools can be employed that enable development of a wide range of computing applications. Such applications may include, for example, web applications, extensible markup language (XML) applications, and traditional client applications. As part of the development process, a user may view, manage, and manipulate a number of objects within the development environment. Such objects may include, for example, forms, controls, components, text strings, and other like elements associated with the development process. The development tool may employ a number of development interfaces that enable the user to interact with such objects.
One such development interface is referred to as a Designer. Generally, the Designer enables the user to add, align, position, view, manage, and manipulate forms and controls. A form is an object that enables the presentation of information to the user and the acceptance of input information from the user. A form may expose properties and methods which define its appearance and behavior, and events which define its interaction with the user. By setting its properties and writing code to respond to its events, a user may customize a form to meet the requirements of an application. One manner in which to define a user interface for a form is to place controls on the form's surface.
A control is an object that is contained within a form. A control may be an object such as, for example, a data grid view, a drop down list, a combo-box, a button, a check-box, as well as non-visual components, for example. Each type of control generally has its own set of properties, methods, and events that make it suitable for a particular purpose. The Designer enables a user to add controls to a form. For example, the Designer may enable a control to be added to a form by dragging and dropping the control from a server management console or a logical data source interface. When a control is added to a form, the Designer enables the control to be aligned and positioned within the form.
Conventional development tools may employ a combination of user interfaces such as traditional menus, shortcut menus, status bars, and toolbars to expose tasks and commands to the user and alert the user to important information within an application. Traditional menus hold commands, grouped by a common theme. Toolbars use buttons to expose frequently used commands. Context menus “pop up” in response to a right-click of the mouse and hold commonly used commands for a particular area of an application. Often, context menus are assigned to controls, and provide particular commands that relate to the control to which they are assigned. Status bars indicate an application state or provide information about a corresponding entity in the application that has a focus, such as a menu command.
One problem facing the development of the software components described above involves the somewhat rigid nature in which components developed under one system interact with components designed for another. For instance, software components specified under the conditions of one operating system or language environment may have difficulty interfacing to components specified for another system. This often leads to complicated pieces of code being written and debugged to enable code interactions between different systems. In other cases, components may have to be re-designed completely in order to operate in a different environment.